Facebook sued over terms of service changes

If you think it's hard to keep just a small handful of people happy, imagine the monumental work behind keeping 250 million people happy. That's one of the tasks that huge social networking sites face on a daily basis, balancing the needs of tens or hundreds of millions of opinions all at once. Facebook has apparently failed in this, to the point that some users have decided to sue. It doesn't take much thought to stumble upon the reason why: Privacy.

With millions of people dumping very personal information onto the site, it seems many of them have an expectation as to who truly owns this. Due to recent changes to their privacy policy, Facebook seems to be taking the position that anything submitted to their site becomes their own property – a stance that has users in an uproar and has resulted in at least five people filing suit against the service.

Facebook denies the claims and plans to defend themselves against the accusations. The fight itself may not boil down to the wording in Facebook's terms, but rather the process involved in changing it. Part of the suit relies on a claim that Facebook doesn't notify (or notify properly) of changes to the ToS. Though just another suit among many, this is another example of the continuing struggle between users and service providers, battling over who truly owns what.